Chinese intellectuals were eager to hear from the priest-missionaries who came their way.

“A spiritual nature is God’s gift to man and it is the greatest gift of all… benevolence, righteousness, social etiquette and wisdom are all indeed of this nature. These things that God has given us are what we’ve had all along. The bible calls it morality and Confucius calls it conscience,” Yáng Tíngyún wrote in The Light Emitted by Heaven.